


if i wake up and you're still here, with me, in the morning

by elegantwings



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantwings/pseuds/elegantwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's been quiet lately in Beacon Hills, and it's making Stiles a little stir-crazy." As if the universe is trying to make up for it, Stiles keeps running into Derek, in places like the drug store on otherwise normal nights made less so by werewolves with the werewolf flu. Wait, werewolves can get the flu?</p>
            </blockquote>





	if i wake up and you're still here, with me, in the morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [varlovian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/varlovian/gifts).



> Written for the Sterek Charity Auction. Title from "Be Still My Heart" by the Postal Service. ~ I was given an awesome prompt (basically Derek being sick, and domesticity ensuing), honestly one of my favorite things to write, and had such a great time writing this. Enjoy!

It’s been quiet lately in Beacon Hills, and it’s making Stiles a little stir-crazy. Not that he wants his life endangered any time soon…it’s more that he misses being a part of something. Now that the werewolf thing has died down, Stiles is back to listening to police reports and wishing to somehow be a part of it. Sure, there’s lacrosse practice, and time with Scott, Scott who Doesn’t Get It, Scott who is happy enough to go on dates, go to the movies, stay in during the full moon.

Dates. Stiles still calls the Lydia card, but since Derek Hale became a constant fixture in Stiles’ life (and then wasn’t anymore, just as suddenly,) Stiles just hasn’t cared about getting a date. For reasons he doesn’t ever plan on thinking about too closely, thank you. He cares about sex, sure, but the long and most likely painful process of getting to know someone new, it all seems kind of exhausting. He’ll get beneath the surface, learn all the little bits and pieces that make her special (like he learned Lydia, like he learned Scott), and then they’ll go to college in different places, and break up.

He didn’t really have a choice in learning Derek, though. Quick to anger and frustration, lonely and full of hate, right? Yet, he’s the one who pushes Stiles out of danger right on time, tries to help Scott, serves some kind of twisted penance in his crumbling home. Even someone who didn’t grow up with a cop for a father and doctors trying to control the input/output of information in his fragile little brain could tell there was more to Derek than the rough exterior.

Derek’s hiding the part of himself wrecked to pieces over his family’s death, that much is obvious to Stiles. He never expects to learn that part of Derek first hand, to catch it in pieces like he learned that Lydia stores all her faith in equations, and Scott would do anything, anything to make his mother happy.

They cross paths at the bank with a barely perceivable nod. Actually, from Derek’s side it’s more of a glare and Stiles absolutely fails at looking aloof and cool. Later, Stiles’ mind wanders to Derek and the atm. What kind of password does he have? Sourwolf in telephone numbers? He laughs out loud, ignores the looks he gets. He really does wonder, though. Laura’s birthday? His mother’s? The anniversary of the fire? Derek would be that self-abusing. No, definitely “howl”, 4695.

Stiles begins to catch Derek doing the most mundane human things. Grocery shopping, walking around the mall. He follows him around ikea for ten minutes once before Derek says plainly, “I know you’re there,” which is definitely an invitation for Stiles to help him pick out furniture for his new apartment. In the parking lot, Derek actually thanks him, despite how irritated he’d acted the whole time. Maybe, Stiles wonders, the irritation was with the store and not him. Ikea is loud, kind of confusing, and nothing if not a constant reminder of the nuclear family. He puts that on the little list of “maybe true facts about Derek Hale”: 4659, expensive toilet paper, owns sixty pairs of sunglasses, Ikea reminds him that his parents are dead.”

*

Stiles makes a late-night run to the drug store, because his dad actually listened to the messages on the machine (all six of them), about how his prescription’s been ready for the past week and a half. It’s not that Stiles is against the happy pills that bless him with better focus and fewer panic attacks, it’s that he doesn’t really think upping the dosage was all that necessary. It’s not like he’s more hyperactive, he’s bored. But how do you say, “My monster hunting nightlife is a thing of the past and watching movies with my friends just doesn’t cut it anymore” to your psychiatrist?

Stiles almost passes the pale, scruffy guy snuffling over cold medicine without giving him a second glance. Then he doubles back and stares at him, pathetic, red-nosed and hiding in what looks like two sweaters and a jacket. “Don’t say a word,” Derek warns, and then coughs, loud and wet and totally without covering his mouth.

“Dude! Didn’t your mother ever teach-,” Stiles pauses, considers, and continues, “Whatever, same boat. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to cover your mouth?”

Derek continues to glare, but looks mildly embarrassed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Once, maybe?” He glances at the medicines again. “I’d need triple the dose of any of these for it to even kind of work,” he complains, half to himself.

Stiles ignores his survival instinct and presses his hand against Derek’s forehead, finding him to feel something like a furnace. He scoops several different brands of meds into a basket, gets some canned soup and Gatorade, remembers his own meds at the last second, and puts it all on Derek’s card. The guy at the register takes one look at Derek’s state and does not even question a thing.

Through it all Derek is silent, lets Stiles arrange him into his Jeep and put the heat up all the way, lets him promise to come back for his car later. Gives him directions to the new apartment, learns to cough and sneeze into his elbow.

“It’s rare,” Derek explains in between spoonfuls of soup he’s eating without complaint, “But it happens. Could be some kind of wolfsbane in the air, maybe in the water, something small that left me vulnerable.” He sets his bowl on the coffee table, the dark, small rounded one that Stiles picked out. “Thanks for doing this. You didn’t have to.” He pulls a blanket up around himself and sniffles, sheepishly accepting the tissue box Stiles waves in his face. “Don’t forget to come back in the morning to get my car.”

“Come back?” Stiles is genuinely surprised; leaving Derek hadn’t even occurred to him, although it’s probably the only option. But he’d been thinking while Derek talked, thinking about werewolves and packs, and the ways people can become vulnerable.

Derek raises his eyebrows. “Does it look like there’s room on the couch for the both of us?”

It’s a joke, it must be, but Stiles stands up too fast and stick-straight, jerks forward and starts fussing with the blankets. “You should sleep in your bed, ‘s warmer,” he mumbles, one arm supporting a reluctant Derek and the other texting his dad that it’s study night at Scott’s. And Derek doesn’t complain, just goes along with it.

The sheets are dark blue and an obscene thread count because Derek can afford it, but they’re Stiles’ choice, of course. The comforter is thick and warm, and combined with Derek’s fever it makes Stiles strip down to his boxers without a second thought. They fidget around each other for a few minutes, until Stiles drags Derek into his arms and presses his nose against the back of his neck. They can talk about this tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe never…

“Stiles,” Derek sighs, “Stop freaking out.”

Stiles forces himself to relax, plays that game you play as a kid trying to fall asleep. First his feet, then his calves, knees, and so on, up to his arms around Derek and his nose against his neck. By then Derek’s breathing heavier, snoring just a little. Stiles wonders if it’s the cold, or if he always sounds like that, if he’ll ever get the chance to listen to Derek sleep again.

In the morning, Stiles wakes up alone to the smell of coffee. He stumbles towards the smell, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and trying to comprehend that he just spent the night with Derek Hale. Who looks pretty good for having been half a corpse the night before. Stiles takes a seat across from Derek and clears his throat. “So, last night?”

Derek rolls his eyes and gets up, pulling Stiles to stand up as well. Before Stiles can protest, he’s kissed on the lips, and Stiles is so caught off guard he can’t help but push Derek away and wipe a hand over his mouth. “Oh my god,” he says, making a disgusted face, and then looks at Derek’s confusion and repeats, “Oh my god!” with just a little more panic. “I hate hazelnut,” he says sheepishly.

“And why would I have expected any other kind of first kiss,” Derek laughs and takes Stiles’ hand, pulling him close again. “Can you get over it?”

“Definitely.” And Stiles can, and does, because it’s totally worth it. It leads to a quiet morning of coffee, and more kisses, and Derek hiding a sneeze here and there (into his elbow, like a civilized adult.)

It turns out Derek’s atm code is in fact the date of the fire, but he doesn’t complain when Stiles changes it to their anniversary, instead.


End file.
